St. Bartholomew's Church

One of the themes that keeps being repeated in our community is that we need to be
learning to listen to God and one another. It does make sense that if His goal is to make us into the people He wants us to be, then we need to be learning to listen.

Maybe more bluntly, we are being called to listen with ears to hear not with filters to pick up only what we are interested in.

Counseling rooms are overflowing with people who have lost the ability to hear.

In a culture that celebrates multi- tasking, we seem to have compromised the direct attentiveness necessary to pick up the nuance of body language in intonation.

There is certainly evidence that we struggle with the “inner” ears necessary to hear the voice of the Spirit of God, as He directs us through the pathway of life.

Week after week we hear the phrase “Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church” and week after week we automatically respond with our “thanks be to God”. The resounding question that needs to be asked is “what has the Spirit actually been saying?” Do we have ears to hear? And, if we have ears to hear, are we actually willing to respond?

Throughout the scriptural narrative we see God anxious to talk with His creation. From the first of Genesis through the end of the book of the Revelation, He is engaging with the intent of developing an intimate relationship with His own.

Time and time again Genesis chapter three is repeated. God communicates clearly but His words get reinterpreted which leads to bad behavioral patterns (known affectionately as sin). Over and over God seeks to generate this intimacy and over and over we don’t seem to have ears that will actually hear so as to understand which leaves room for bad interpretation.

This Advent season we will be focusing on what it means to “hear” from God. This is risky because to want ears to hear means that we have wills that want to obey once

His word is heard. I have wondered if we keep our ears closed because we don’t want to have to obey!

It might be helpful to understand that hearing has to do with the discipline of internal transformation (taught about during the Lenten season this past year), because hearing from God is precipitated by an internal desire to be formed into the image of Christ.

Had Mary not had ears to hear from God she might never have made herself available to conceive the Christ. She is our model this season as to make Christ known in the world today, we need to be as willing to hear and respond.

The psalmist put it this way “Today, if you would hear His voice, harden not your hearts...” (Ps 95:8) I invite you to ‘with soft hearts’ to listen to how God wants to speak to the church that we might make the incarnation real in this age.